The capacity crowd April 9 at the Berklee Performance Center was clearly there for Asha Bhosle and Zakir Hussain, two of the greatest living performers of Indian music — one from the world of “filmi,” one from classical. But the occasion was a Kronos Quartet concert, and Kronos kept these two celebrities off stage until after intermission. First: a new Terry Riley piece, “The Cusp of Magic,” written for Kronos with another guest performer, Chinese pipa player Wu Man. The reaction: polite applause . . . after each movement.
Kronos returned to the stage — alone — to even more tepid applause. Still no Asha? Finally, David Harrington, Kronos director and first violinist, made the introduction the audience had been waiting for, and on walked Bhosle, resplendent in jewels and a glittering white sari. She asked the crowd if they spoke Hindi or English. The majority thundered back in Hindi, but she politely acknowledged the minority and promised to speak in English.
She introduced Kronos, gave David Harrington a nod, and they kicked off the music prepared for this special event — songs by Bhosle’s late husband, R.D. Burman, in arrangements created by Kronos for their new album, You've Stolen My Heart: Songs from R.D. Burman's Bollywood (Nonesuch). In truth, someone pressed a button. Indeed, this was the first string quartet I’ve ever seen play to backing tapes. But, in the face of Bollywood excess — the exuberantly commercial, campy, pop embellishments that permeate filmi music — Kronos needed those tapes to recreate the fullness of the innumerable overdubs on the album. So, they simply played the handful of parts they could recreate live to pre-recorded material.
Two violins sounded like 100. The cello often doubled as a bass, thanks to an octave shifter. And the pipa frequently mimicked a sitar. Wu Man did play an actual electric sitar briefly. And Zakir Hussain used not only his tabla, but also a small battery of drums. Sadly, few of the other instruments could respond to his improvisations: they were mostly on tape. Meanwhile, Bhosle struggled to follow the collectively wooden time of the ensemble.
With just the skills possessed by these superb musicians from different worlds, this could have been different. They could have responded to one another live. What a concert that might have been . . .
